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Celebrating Slaughter: War and Collective Amnesia
War memorials and museums are temples to the god of war. The hushed voices, the well-tended grass, the flapping of the flags allow us to ignore how and why our young died. They hide the futility and waste of war. They sanitize the savage instruments of death that turn young soldiers and Marines into killers, and small villages in Vietnam or Afghanistan or Iraq into hellish bonfires. There are no images in these memorials of men or women with their guts hanging out of their bellies, screaming pathetically for their mothers. We do not see mangled corpses being shoved in body bags. There are no sights of children burned beyond recognition or moaning in horrible pain. There are no blind and deformed wrecks of human beings limping through life. War, by the time it is collectively remembered, is glorified and heavily censored.
I blame our war memorials and museums, our popular war films and books, for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as much as George W. Bush. They provide the mental images and historical references to justify new conflicts. We equate Saddam Hussein with Adolf Hitler. We see al-Qaida as a representation of Nazi evil. We view ourselves as eternal liberators. These plastic representations of war reconfigure the past in light of the present. War memorials and romantic depictions of war are the social and moral props used to create the psychological conditions to wage new wars.
War memorials are quiet, still, reverential and tasteful. And, like church, such sanctuaries are important, but they allow us to forget that these men and women were used and often betrayed by those who led the nation into war. The memorials do not tell us that some always grow rich from large-scale human suffering. They do not explain that politicians play the great games of world power and stoke fear for their own advancement. They forget that young men and women in uniform are pawns in the hands of cynics, something Pat Tillman’s family sadly discovered. They do not expose the ignorance, raw ambition and greed that are the engine of war.
There is a burning need, one seen in the collective memory that has grown up around World War II and the Holocaust, to turn the horror of mass murder into a tribute to the triumph of the human spirit. The reality is too unpalatable. The human need to make sense of slaughter, to give it a grandeur it does not possess, permits the guilty to go free. The war makers—those who make the war but never pay the price of war—live among us. They pen thick memoirs that give sage advice. They are our elder statesmen, our war criminals. Henry Kissinger. Robert McNamara. Dick Cheney. George W. Bush. Any honest war memorial would have these statesmen hanging in effigy. Any honest democracy would place them behind bars.
Primo Levi, who survived Auschwitz, fought against the mendacity of collective memory until he took his own life. He railed against the human need to mask the truth of the Holocaust and war by giving it a false, moral narrative. He wrote that the contemporary history of the Third Reich could be “reread as a war against memory, an Orwellian falsification of memory, falsification of reality, negation of reality.” He wondered if “we who have returned” have “been able to understand and make others understand our experience.” He wrote of the Jewish collaborator Chaim Rumkowski, who ran the Lodz ghetto on behalf of the Nazis, that “we are all mirrored in Rumkowski, his ambiguity is ours, it is our second nature, we hybrids molded from clay and spirit. His fever is ours, the fever of Western civilization that ‘descends into hell with trumpets and drums.’ ” We, like Rumkowski, “come to terms with power, forgetting that we are all in the ghetto, that the ghetto is walled in, that outside the ghetto reign the lords of death, and that close by the train is waiting.” We are, Levi understood, perpetually imprisoned within the madness of self-destruction. The rage of Cindy Sheehan, who lost her son Casey in Iraq, is a rage Levi felt. But it is a rage most of us do not understand.
A war memorial that attempted to depict the reality of war would be too subversive. It would condemn us and our capacity for evil. It would show that the line between the victim and the victimizer is razor-thin, that human beings, when the restraints are cut, are intoxicated by mass killing, and that war, rather than being noble, heroic and glorious, obliterates all that is tender, decent and kind. It would tell us that the celebration of national greatness is the celebration of our technological capacity to kill. It would warn us that war is always morally depraved, that even in “good” wars such as World War II all can become war criminals. We dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Nazis ran the death camps. But this narrative of war is unsettling. It does not create a collective memory that serves the interests of those who wage war and permit us to wallow in self-exaltation.
There are times—World War II and the Serb assault on Bosnia would be examples—when a population is pushed into a war. There are times when a nation must ingest the poison of violence to survive. But this violence always deforms and maims those who use it. My uncle, who drank himself to death in a trailer in Maine, fought for four years in the South Pacific during World War II. He and the soldiers in his unit never bothered taking Japanese prisoners.
The detritus of war, the old cannons and artillery pieces rolled out to stand near memorials, were curious and alluring objects in my childhood. But these displays angered my father, a Presbyterian minister who was in North Africa as an Army sergeant during World War II. The lifeless, clean and neat displays of weapons and puppets in uniforms were being used, he said, to purge the reality of war. These memorials sanctified violence. They turned the instruments of violence—the tanks, machine guns, rifles and airplanes—into an aesthetic of death.
These memorials, while they pay homage to those who made “the ultimate sacrifice,” dignify slaughter. They perpetuate the old lie of honor and glory. They set the ground for the next inferno. The myth of war manufactures a collective memory that ennobles the next war. The intimate, personal experience of violence turns those who return from war into internal exiles. They cannot compete against the power of the myth. This collective memory saturates the culture, but it is “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
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178 Comments so far
Show AllJust a note, Hedges cites Primo Levi, "who survived Auschwitz", on the mendacity of collective memory. Do you know how Levi 'survived' Auschwitz? While there he got typhus and was put in the camp hospital. When the Soviet army approached, the Nazis evacuated westward, leaving the patients in the hospital. The Nazis didn't attempt to exterminate Levi, they tried to cure him.
Elie Wiesel was also in the Auschwitz camp hospital when the Russians approached. The Nazis gave the patients able to travel the option of staying in the hospital, or evacuating with the Nazis. Wiesel, with his aged father, chose to leave with the Nazis.
Otto Frank, Anne's father, was also in the Auschwitz hospital, and was liberated by the Russians.
"The Nazis didn't attempt to exterminate Levi, they tried to cure him."
Yes, the Nazis tried to cure Levi by putting him in a concentration camp in the first place. What were they trying to cure Levi of when they put him in Auschwitz?
i like your question.........it appeals to my sense of humour.
Your description of Primo Levi's life under the Nazis is distorted. Primo Levi survived mostly because: the Italians, not being as rabidly anti-Jewish as Hitler, delayed his incarceration; he was a valuable chemist who was needed for various projects; he was young and healthy; because when he finally got to Auschwitz toward the end of the war, he and his fellow inmates rallied to help each other. (Read "Survival in Auschwitz") He did the best he could.
Complementing the hospitals in Auschwitz is beyone bizarre. Would Levi or anyone else mentioned have had typhus or malnutrition if there had been no concentration camp?
Levi's books are moving descriptions of the struggle to stay human under the worst circumstances. Despite his pain at the way humans treat each other, he kept himself alive, working for peace, until after his mother died. Then he committed suicide. I took that as a signal that deep down he had actually lost hope in the human race, but did not want to hurt his mother. Love for his mother was the only thing keeping him alive. Isn't that the way it is? We stay strong despite everything for the sake of our loved ones.
Joe
....Complementing the hospitals in Auschwitz is beyone bizarre.
Only because we have been conditioned from birth to regard the Nazis as devils incarnate. Not only did Auschwitz have hospitals, it had a theater, a library, several orchestras, a brothel ! Pointing out facts is not, to a rational person, bizarre.
Auschwitz was located in the midst of an industrial region that was critical to the German war effort as there were many suppliers of war materiel, including Farben, Krupp, and Siemens. The concentration camp supplied up to 70,000 workers to these industries.
The Nazis didn't attempt to exterminate Levi. When he got sick, the put him in the hospital.
So, that is the reality.
I think that the rational response to this reality, if it is new to you, would be for you to reflect on what you believe, and why you believe it. Not to criticize me for pointing it out.
Not Allan, you are a truly frightening person.
Sioux Rose
JOE: As usual, well-tempered, intelligent post.
Oddly related, last night I watched Star Trek II which I'd never seen before. It provides the background information on what led Darth to become, like Lucifer, a fallen Jedi/angel. The death of his mother, inclusive of how she died, played into his psyche as a wound that would not heal. Some of us are more given to forgiveness than others. Although people often reference "the accident of birth," I subscribe to a view adopted from Edgar Cayce, the American "Sleeping Prophet." It is that we are born to those with whom we have prior karmic agendas. Sometimes one or both parents has a skill, talent, or aptitude that supports our own bright potential, and thus supports its unfolding. At other times, the parent can feel (if not act) like the ultimate enemy. Even though most of us have scant memories of events before the age of 4 or 5, that doesn't mean that a good deal of programming hasn't become established in that delicate interim. Even warriors are impacted by Mommy and Daddy in ways unseen.
One thing the film graphically depicted was a clone army. I don't know if George Lucas ever read the myriad works on or about Edgar Cayce, and his thousands of channeled sessions. He spoke about Atlantis and its genetic engineering. One goal was to create a worker caste capable of hard labors but lacking the intellectual capacity to question its "masters." DARP's inroads into robotic war technology, added to the growing use of genetic engineering makes one wonder if George Lucas will turn out to be the Prophet of our times. Some of the parallels between this film and events today are chilling.
Good comment, Sioux Rose, but I think you're referring to "Star WARS", not Star TREK.
Not a big deal to me, but aficionados will excoriate you as if you'd gotten Aries mixed up with Sagittarius!
BTW, the TV is on as I write this-- a rerun of "Antiques Roadshow". I wasn't paying attention, but just as I typed the phrase "Star WARS" above, I HEARD the phrase "Star Wars" on the TV!
At just that moment, Star Wars memorabilia was being presented! Freaky.
Given your expertise, you may find significance to this seeming coincidence. ;)
· Yr Obd't Servant
Sioux Rose
Good evening, OBEDIENT: Mea culpa, indeed! Thank you for the correction. I'm a bit tired this evening. That was an Aries full moon the past few days and my quiet neighborhood felt invaded by every form of motor-driven noise imaginable. I am recovering (LOL).
What some call coincidence, I see as evidence of a Divine Order. Have you seen the film, "My Dinner with Andre?" During a drawn-out restaurant scene, Andre, a mystic, explains some of his experiences to a very pragmatic New York playwright friend. There is a particular inference to a magazine he picks up that links with his birth date and a key topic of interest to him. The pragmatist responds something to the effect of, "Were he to dine at a Chinese restaurant and open up his fortune cookie, that FORTUNE COOKIE IS IN NO POSITION TO TELL HIS FUTURE." That is how the earthbound view these miraculous synapses of synchronicity. To mystics, causal relationships are more diffusive, but every bit as real. It's kind of like explaining to someone one of those "you had to be there" style moments. I do think YOU get it. N'est-ce pas? Jimi Hendrix might sing the equivalent as, "Are you experienced... have you ever been experienced?"
.... JOE: As usual, well-tempered, intelligent post.
It was not a well-tempered intelligent post. It was a name-calling evasion. Commenting on hospitals at Auschwitz is in no way 'bizarre'.
It does conflict with everything you have been taught, or taught to assume, about the subject however. So, the impulse is to evade and to attack the messenger. But, that ain't really 'intelligent'.
Sioux Rose - your post too was an evasion, off to Star Trek even. Why not address the facts, if the Nazis were trying to exterminate the Jews in the camps, why did they treat Levi, Wiesel, and Frank for disease/injury, even to the extent of hospitalizing them? Does it surprise you?
[if the Nazis were trying to exterminate the Jews in the camps, ]
They were. If you doubt that you can look up the data for yourself in the archives of the German gov't. They were also trying to exterminate a good number of other ethnic groups, like the Slavs, the Gypsies, and anyone else they regarded as being unfit to live.
[why did they treat Levi, Wiesel, and Frank for disease/injury, even to the extent of hospitalizing them?]
For reasons that have been mentioned before, they wanted to give the new arrivals the idea that they would be able to survive the death camps.
[ Does it surprise you?]
Does what surprise me? That white folk can be just as evil as the other ethnic groups on this rotten planet? No, not at all.
[If you doubt that you can look up the data for yourself in the archives of the German gov't.]
This is nonsense. The archives of the German gov't.? The Auschwitz records were captured by the Soviets. They hid them for 40 years and produced them following glasnost. You can see a report here ... google -auschwitz religious denominations - for an Auschwitz museum report summarizing the data. Surprise - more Roman Catholics died at Auschwitz than Jews.
The records captured by the US have still, for all practical purposes, being kept secret at Bad Arolsen. Now, after 60 years they are allowing access to approved persons.
[they wanted to give the new arrivals the idea that they would be able to survive the death camps. ]
Good grief.
The records exist. If you want to rewrite history, you're going to need a bit more than fantasy and belief. You'll need facts, ones that you don't have. There are no facts that back up your absurd allegations, I'd sooner believe that Israel went into Gaza with flowers and chocolate than the claims you're making about what the Germans did in the 40s.
Sioux Rose
NOT ALLAN strikes me a lot like "I can't believe it's not butter," thus raising the question what exactly is it? You know, a good deal of perception is really based on projection. So if you NEED to believe the Nazis really cared about all those Jews, and that the Concentration Camps were really like nice little vacation plans, then that represents YOUR need. Why? Do you hate Jews? My background is Jewish, although I do NOT subscribe to ANY patriarchal, organized religion. Nonetheless, there are distant family members of mine who died in those camps. And as a child, my father had us watch documentaries so that we could understand the HORRORS that human beings, when under the spell of deceptive leaders, could fall to. Do NOT ask me to argue FOR the Nazis, nor would I argue FOR the US military or the Israeli military, or any other Mars-ruled force of arms that pitted its weapons against the innocent, or the latest incovenient (to resource acquisition) target group. BRUTALITY, man's inhumanity to man, is the real enemy to human beings, as opposed to the latest PR-assisted designated "untouchables" group.
If you are posting in this forum, where there TRULY are a number of enlightened persons, "regulars" at this club... then HOPEFULLY some of it will rub off on you. Consciousness, unlike our bodies, does NOT stop growing at the outset of adulthood. Perhaps you are at the threshold of taking a bold leap beyond past prejudices. I wish you good luck with THAT voyage. It's the ONE every soul/individual is destined to take, in this life or another. Yet given the ecological ruin of this beloved planet, chances are better that you take the journey now, since the possibilities for incarnating on this blue-green sphere may soon dramatically decrease.
Sioux,
I don't 'need' to believe that the Nazis put Levi, Wiesel, and Frank in the hospital when they got sick/injured, it is a matter of historical record. Do you dispute it?
If you believe the standard history of the era, than these facts should produce, this is the phrase I was trying to think of yesterday, a great deal of cognitive dissonance in your mind.
Instead, you ignore totally the facts. You can't let them into your 'enlightened' consciousness. You imply that they are false/irrelevant/racist by asking if I hate Jews. I'm a little disappointed in you.
Apparently you need to think the Nazis are absolute devils. My evidence? You can't even acknowledge the fact that the Nazis hospitalized sick people at Auschwitz.
Don't you think it just a teeny bit odd that the three most famous holocaust survivors who accuse the Nazis of mass murder and attempting to exterminate the Jews were in fact hospitalized by the Nazis when they got sick (Levi, Frank), injured (Wiesel)? Isn't that just a bit ... surprising? Doesn't it contradict the standard narrative?
Here is another little fact for you to ignore - Wiesel wrote the book 'Night' about his experiences at Auschwitz. There is not a single mention of gas chambers in the book. Does that surprise you? Wiesel says, in one passage in the book, and that's it, that the Nazis killed the Jews by throwing them alive into burning pits, one for adults and one for children. What do you make of that? How does a truly enlightened mind deal with that absurdity?
I think if you are Jewish you have a special responsibility to examine these facts dispassionately and respond rationally. But, I don't expect it. Claiming that I'm unenlightened, racist, etc., is too easy.
I was going to simply comment that as usual Chris Hedges is right and provide and example of how deep the roots of militarism are based on the comments of a football play-by-play announcer I was listening to Saturday. But after reading Not Allan's dreadful commentary that will have to wait.
You racist pig! Gee, its a darn shame that the Nazis did not have a larger hospital at Auschwitz. Then everyone there might have been saved?
As critical as I am of the state of Israel bigoted nonsense like Not Allen's provides some validity to the charge of "left-wing antisemitism." Further, how about a citation of where one might verify the dubious assertion that Primo Levi, Elie Wiesel, and Otto Frank were all "saved" by the Nazi medical establishment (those beloved goose-stepping angels of mercy)?
....Further, how about a citation of where one might verify the dubious assertion that Primo Levi, Elie Wiesel, and Otto Frank were all "saved" by the Nazi medical establishment.
It's common knowledge, you can check any source, e.g. wiki. Wiesel describes his experiences in 'Night', including choosing to leave Auschwitz with the Nazis with his father. His father was not ill when the Russians approached, but the doctor told Wiesel that he would let his father stay in the hospital too.
BTW, this isn't 'left-wing antisemitism', first, because it's just facts that can easily be checked, and second, because I ain't 'left-wing'.
So, non left wing anti-semitism is more acceptable than left wing anti-semitism?
I notice you conveniently avoid mentioning why Levi, and Wiesel were in Auschwitz in the first place.
What vacuous crap. But then, what should you expect from someone who still hasn't learned that the totalitarianism of concentrating all power in one party is one reason why communism degenerated and failed.
Darn, beat me to it.
They can learn from failure... as China and Cuba are ready to face the future pretty well.
But Master will continue to be bugged if he expects any progressive portal to declare the only answer is International Communism.
China has already degenerated, in multiple ways. China is a totalitarian state, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, Tian An Men, that is not communist.
But M,
whatever system is set up will become corrupted and turn into the same system as every other system--ever more brutal domination by the sickest--until a critical mass of us heals our psychological problems. As usual, lots more to say but a temporary attack of the fetalities--a collapse into the fetal position of hopelessness--has been brought on by a week-long exchange with a climate-denying midwestern farmer, after several years of uninterrupted political tillage in the face of constant erosion. Never met this farmer but he seems like a completely normal 'American'. He also completely, almost psychotically, confuses his personal story with the state of the world and thus remains utterly impervious to truth.
He's a reminder, in these days of dreadly dullness, that we and and the people who passed their psychotic lack of awareness on to us, the German majority of the 1930s, are infinitely regressing mirror images of each other, like when you stand between 2 mirrors facing each other. We get lost in the fact that it goes back an incomprehensibly long way, and we forget everything--including the fact that we don't have to heal all the dead generations, only the living one. Staring into the mirror we literally lose touch with ourselves and the ground, and get lost in intellectual theories about better ways to not feel the reality of our being empty in a world of infinite riches. Putting someone else's face on the coin won't change that; the coins still remind us every second of how much we don't have.
Viable political leadership? Such as Stalin? Such as Mao? Or other more petty dictators such as Ceausescu?
A system built on the leadership of a single party of communist revolution cannot be democratic. Read some Rosa Luxemburg. You offer no suggestions as to how your system is not going to degenerate into totalitarianism and gulags, just as it did the first time around. You state that we must figure how to make Communism work. So, which is it? If we have yet to figure out how to make it work, how can it be the the one and true solution you claim it to be?
I'm not trying to paint you with the same brush as the scum Stalin. He was indeed an enemy of socialism and humanity in general. I apologise for it appearing to be the case.
My point with Stalin was how do you stop a one party system from degenerating into Stalinism? The conditions that existed for the rise of Stalin, will exist, and still exist. In the event of a communist revolution, there will be inevitable resistance. Stalinist types will then use that resistance for their own ends.
"The outstanding feature that allowed Stalin to strangle the world's first and only workers' revolution was the teensy quantity of learned and disciplined party cadre capable of opposing him. For starters, too many of the best threw themselves into mortal battle to save the workers' state from capitalist reaction. Which side would you have been on?"
Yes. True. And this will happen again. In the event of a revolution, there will again be reaction. In the event of such reaction, how do you stop another Stalin? In the event of such inevitable reaction, how do you respond to that reaction, such that you do not go down the totalitarianism?
"It turns out that I long ago learned much from Rosa Luxemburg, and could stand a refresher, but I am pretty sure that she would support what I have said here. ...And by the way, do you have a positive suggestion on how that good person would have us advance?"
Luxemburg suggested the Dialectic of Spontaneity and Organisation.
Dear Master,
Since you brought it up, Who will support your Communist revolution?
You mentioned leaders? Who will lead it?
In a revolution self-improvement isn't narcissistic; it's crucial. It’s improvement of the only instruments we have to wage the revolution with. Without it we simply rebuild the same cruel and corrupt system we had before, like a woman who falls in love with one abusive partner after another, never understanding that they're all the same. Yet you're right, it can't happen without social justice, equality, education. The two improvements, inner and outer, have to happen at the same time; in fact they have to be parts of the same process; in fact they have to be accomplished with the same actions.
In Germany between the wars Wilhelm Reich started sex treatment and education and political clinics for the poor in Berlin and other places, realizing the link between sexual repression and people’s acquiescence to war and fascism, and the unbreakable link between body and psyche. Today Max Blumenthal, author of Republican Gomorrah, is making the same connection between our sado-masochistic mixing up of sex and violence and our willingness to allow corrupt, anti-everything, life-hating Republican (and DINO) rule. We can’t change the way we do government without changing the way we do…everything, including our relationships with each other and the Earth. Little steps, little master, all on converging paths.
Only war memorials I've been to were the 'museum' (which is an inadequate word) at Dachau, the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam, the Angel Fire VietNam memorial in New Mexico and impromptu displays put on by the Veterans For Peace, or gatherings on Aug.6th in Los Alamos to commemorate Hiroshima, which felt like attempts to help survivors or their loved ones or students of history come to grips with war's hellish realities and promote healing and compassion. But I guess I don't count cannons in parks or granite slabs with carved names and patriotic poems and flags as war memorials.... they seem a revisionist 'memory' of a nobility and service that belies and degrades the thwarted or twisted aspirations of the human beings killed in wars desperately trying to stay alive and keep their buddies alive while kidding themselves if they could that it was all for "freedom" or "democracy", so I usually can't stomach that feeling of betrayal enough to buy in much to any 'God and Country' eloquence. They are ubiquitous as billboards for McDonalds and carry a similar sloganeering in a way that I do not find compelling.
Several years ago on Memorial Day in a small, poor NM town I stumbled upon an event called "The Healing Field" which was a large field full of row upon row of flags...each row represented a war--if memory serves, from WW1 thru "Operation Enduring Freedom" and clearly it meant alot to the people there... a struggling working class town with an unusual number of yellow ribbons displayed everywhere you went. Walking down each long row you'd see tags with names of soldiers who'd been killed in the particular war, with their rank and the date of their death. The shocking thing was how many wars we've had and how many local names of these poor kids were on display. Gov. Bill Richardson flew in on a Black Hawk helicopter and a local priest spoke who at first I thought might rail against the waste of war, but as it turned out he stuck to the flag-happy hawk script and I remember thinking to myself, If I had any guts I'd go up there with a copy of Twain's 'War Prayer' to read until they came and arrested me.
As a Vietnam veteran, this article resonated and hit home in a powerful way. Along with memorials, parades also "perpetuate the old lie of honor and glory." What I find especially irritating is the word honor that is forever used in connection with veterans. As Hedges implies, there is nothing honorable about killing and taking part in wars and occupations against people that have never threatened anyone in these United States. It appears that whenever a person meets someone who has been in the military the first reaction is to thank him or her for their service. It is as if they have willed themselves not to see the button on my shirt which says Vietnam Veterans AGAINST The War.
If these super patriotic Americans had an ounce of honesty in them, instead of building war memorials and museums and holding parades to "honor" veterans, they should have inscriptions on these buildings and signs preceding the parades proclaiming that they wish, not to honor veterans but, rather, to LAMENT the fact that they had to have been placed in that most untenable position in the first place. In an ideal America, museums and parades would be built and held for those people who said NO to illegal and unjust wars. But honesty has rarely been the strong suit of Americans which ends up taking a back seat to the continued myth making of the American soldier and the wars that he or she participates in [as in the example that Hedges gives of Pat Tillman dying because of alleged heroic action on his part instead of the real cause which was "friendly fire"].
Your post was very moving. I'm sorry for your relatives.
You're right about the art world in general - earnestness is considered very unhip. My wife recently showed a series of "torture pillows" at a local gallery. They're small satin pillows on which she drew reproductions of news photos related to torture and the Iraq war, including one showing a screaming child splattered with his father's blood. The shocking horror of the images laid against the soft, comforting nature of the pillows was, I thought, a very effective metaphor for our society's desire to hide from this collective nightmare. A freelance reporter for a local newspaper covered the show, but the paper's editor decided that it was too controversial, so the story wasn't printed.
Give my thumbs up--sight unseen--to your wife's work.
If art is not controversial, it's not worth a damn.
Erroll, I agree with what you say about how honesty is trashed when it comes to honoring the soldiers and what happened in museums and memorials. Sometimes, we like to greet someone be it out of fear or because some like myself just don't know what else to say and don't want to make the returning soldier any more unhappy. Like JWVerez, everything you did for the betterment of society as a reformed veteran I honor and cherish. Honesty does not have to be contained on memorials and in museums. When you put honesty to enlightening society where it counts, honesty will shine and can no longer be forced to take a back seat. We just have to try all venues. Take care.
One of Hedges' best.
If we could write not only the names of soldiers but also their family members and what all they suffered due to serving in wars that the US had no business getting into, I'll bet half of the nation's land would be occupied. I dunno if that would still make people think twice before going to war but the chances of avoiding another one of them would improve.
A lot of us who served in Vietnam have a lot more to say about it and what each of us cost our families as a result. If that's not bad enough, some of us find ourselves vulnerable to sicknesses that we could have been immune from had we not bothered to serve these rat bastard politicians. Of all the doctors I had been through this year, I was lucky that one of them considered the possibility that my long term PTSD had a lot to do with my illness and he was an alternative practitioner ! Before her, all I could get was basic treatment of the symptoms only to find them reoccurring and almost leaving me no hope of living. Most doctors in this country only go after obvious symptoms but very few bother to find the problem. There are already a lot of us vets from Vietnam who weren't so fortunate to live due to various war syndromes even if we did avoid losing our lives to bombs and bullets. One difference to keep in mind is that today training in the military is poorer despite increased military spending. Another difference is that with an all volunteer army, guess what's gonna happen when our young soldiers who are lucky enough to survive Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and god knows what other nations to invade return home.
Nice post from a real Viet Nam Combat veteran, one who knows the real cost.
Hi Henry8. Glad to see you again. Some things in life need not take experience to know the costs and yet some of us just have to find out the hard way. I haven't kept up as much about our military after I left but I know some have to learner the even finer details as to what has been going on. Giving up that war feeling isn't always easy when you're trained and pressured into that "win or else" mentality. It takes lots of love and care from family and friends and even that is no guarantee.
Just out of curiosity, what happened when you left Vietnam? I know you didn't suffer as serious the injuries I did but what happened to your way of life in the after years?
JWV, despite all that you have suffered from this bloody war in Vietnam, I give you my blessing and thanks from the bottom of my heart for making through in life and never giving up as well as your family for having rescued you and giving you back a new life of courage with love. You proved that even losing limbs doesn't mean losing one's own heart and mind. From helping students taking interest in IT to helping my company's business partner that you used to work with your wife now taking your place, I still think that you are a reformed hero. I wouldn't be surprised to find a lot of returning soldiers who went through similar events in life.
Thank you for enlightening me with these progressive sites. I enjoy all the posting and learning this year. When I look back, I sometimes wonder what my sentiments on wars and occupation abroad would have been without meeting a former Vietnam vet in person who lost the most limbs that I have ever met. I was always against wars and occupations that we unjustified but it was your presence that first put me in tears and turned my sadness into deep anger when I thought about the lives of those sweetheart civilians who are totally defenseless and poorest amongst the inhabitants suffering from the same dangers the soldiers face. I am not expert on foreign policy but I can guess that not only will pain be greater but because they will be unable to afford any treatment, their brothers and sisters who grieve for them will turn angry and HATE THE US for all that we have done. I do not know what it will take to stop these wars and occupations but I hope that you can enlighten us with solutions.
Good luck.
Jennifer, that was very kind and thoughtful of you. It was upon years of recovery that my family and my wife and her family taught me invaluable lessons about accepting a loss and putting it to rest. My wife emphasized it best when she kept drumming it into me that suicide is not how you handle defeat even if that means losing two legs and an arm from an mine explosion in the battlefield. You learn from what you lost in that event and then you move on.
I have taken the time to see the articles and comments on this site and on Alternet and Truthdig. I must say that you have learned to become less emotional about your losses. I remember when you met me that you went so emotional on politics and took everything too hard on yourself. As a friend, I was glad to help you get on the right track by introducing you to those progressive websites with the hope that you would overcome political anxiety. In the beginning of the year, most people would not have seen the issues and their associated politics the way you had seen it. But as time passed by and the Obama administration furthered his betrayal against those of us who trusted him, more people began to have feelings about this closer to you. I was surprised that even you were surprised at a lot of Obama's outrageous moves but I am glad you were ready to reconcile and help some others overcome their buyer's remorse on voting. You are one very interesting progressive independent I could dream of reading from you about.
I cannot tell you what it will take to whether the storms on the wars either but I can tell you this. Using the internet to spread ideas, getting involved with local politics, and continuing to get in touch with your representation in Washington can make a difference. Whatever you do, continue to make sure that emotions don't get in your way. Life is precious. Someday, I think you will grow up to be someone special and you won't need to learn any hard lessons first.
Good luck to you as well. I shall look forward to reading future posts from you. I don't know if I will be able to post everyday myself.
Emasculate slaughter, then! How about an Iraqiranistan Bush Wars' memorial on the DC mall, consisting of an oil derrick gusher spouting blood, instead? And send Obomber and the DEM congress each a glass hurricane lamp with the red liquid in place of oil in the reservoir for their general BetrayUS for Oildinero.
While he was president, John F. Kennedy noted that you'll never put an end to war until pacifists have some actual and widely held respect in human societies. They didn't then; they don't now. And what USA president in the current age would ever say such a thing?
Thanks for the reference, Mordechai. People, particularly on the left, like to dump on old JFK and refuse to see that he had recognized his mistake in re Vietnam.
well it's pacifism or extinction. Take your pick.Thousands of years later entropy et al.the planet has been around for millions of years and may well be around for a few more million but the dwellers ?
Chris Hedges has seen all the war anyone should ever see.
I believe what he writes is true.
I also believe you may as well rage against the wind, the rain, and the tides.
Chris Hedges has been nothing but an observer on the fringes of war. While his picture of war is partially correct, its far worse than he writes but his whine that honoring those that served is typical of those that didn't.
The "Wall" causes war? Horsefeathers!
His argument wasn't that the wall or other memorials cause war, but that they have been perverted by those who call for war. Almost every combat vet will argue that the best memorial that can be built would be a world that didn't resort to war. Unfortunately there are the lovers of war - like Hitler or bush - who loved the gore, or who loved the idea of others going to war for him.
Sometimes going to war can be justified, but for the last century all the major wars we have fought on this planet have grown from the wars that were fought previously. None of them were necessary wars, nor were they wars that were or could be justified. The minor colonial conflicts were fought because of the results of the last major war (wwii) and none of them were worth the blood shed.
If you had any comprehension of all the war Hedges has witnessed, or even understood what being an "observer" means in this context, you wouldn't so hastily dismiss what he says as "whining." Also, nowhere does he assert that the "Wall", the Vietnam War memorial, causes war, or even mentions that memorial. Do you really think that only combatants in a war can possibly understand anything about it? Would you say the same for, say, the writings of Ernie Pyle during WWII? Was he merely another observer "on the fringes"? Do you as casually dismiss the opinions and warnings about war that civilians caught up in them, losing family members and suffering lifelong physical, spiritual and psychological damage, don't really have much credibility on the subject because they weren't weilding weapons themselves?
You've shown how immensely obtuse you can be on countless subjects in these comment threads, but this one only confirms the rule, not the exception. Those horsefeathers are flying right out of your own mouth, Henry.
I agree.
The only thing I can say in his favor is that when he was posting under the alias Thomas More, he as even MORE obtuse an an even bigger thread hog!
I don't think he's getting smarter, or less rude: just older.
Swiftboating Chris Hedges! I do not think you earn a right to think about war only through participation. We all have a right and obligation to learn about and comment on important issues in a democracy. A sober and thoughtful population would benefit all of us, including the soldiers.
Joe
These scenarios perpetuate themselves througout the ages because most people live within well defined borders; they will change these borders only if change is thrust upon them by fate. But that is precisely what Chris is talknig about with regards the victims of war. The US only experienced this scenario via 911 as if some virtual event, since most never stepped foot on a battlefield. Few if any seek to lose their personal borders, boundaries, or limitations; instead they comment on message borders like this or vote the status quo like the Dems or Republicans, or whoever the intelligensia tells them to, prefering the domesticated world of disempowerment and irrelevance.
But every hundred years or so, fate tells us otherwise: a defining moment thrusts change on those asleep. We may be approching that defining moment again, when the superstructure comes crashing down and Ameri[k]ans are faced with what others in the Third World are now experiencing, or in war torn regions thanks to US hegemony.
Chris understands this!
The herd, however, keeps feeding from the same polluted trough, oblivious to the demise of human viability.
Speaking of glorifying war, has anyone here noticed that CD seems to be studiously avoiding posting articles covering the campaign of lies currently in progress about the supposed "Iranian nuclear threat?" What gives?